Understanding the charts

The charts on the meeting stats page are intended to be simple and intuitive.

The primary chart is a histogram showing the proportion of each working day that has been taken up with meetings and travel time (shown in orange). Meetings are broken down by those you hosted (which are shown in blue) and those you attended (which are shown in green).

Hovering over the bars of the histogram will provide you with a quick overview of the number of meetings and time spent, clicking them will list out the titles of the meetings (in personal view) and provide you a link to any meeting feedback (report) received for those meetings. If they are your meetings, you also have the option to share those reports with your attendees.

In team compiler view, meeting titles are suppressed for reasons of privacy and confidentiality, and meeting/travel timespend is averaged across the team as a proportion of the working day.

Most of the remaining charts are of the ‘donut’ type. These are essentially pie charts which breakdown the population of meetings shown in the primary histogram to reflect what proportion of those meetings fit with certain criteria in terms of: size; length; recurrence; disciplines; etc. The thicker blue donut on each reflects the breakdown of meetings hosted (and which it is easier to do something about) while the thinner green donut reflects the breakdown of meetings attended.

The Size chart reflects the proportion of meetings that are 1:1, small (5 people or less), medium (6 to 10 people) and large (more than 10 people involved in the meeting).

The Participants chart reflects the proportion of meetings that are entirely internal, vs those which are primarily external (half or more of the invitees are external). Mixed is used to denote meetings where there is external participation but the majority of the participants are internal.

Recurrence shows you the proportion of your meetings that are set up to repeat periodically.

Objective / Agenda shows the proportion of your meetings which have an objective and/or agenda included in the body of the invitation. Clearly the technology interpreting this does not have the discernment of the reader, and so these need to be in a particular format to register.

The Type chart shows the proportion of your meetings which are physical (held face to face in a defined location) and virtual (held between people at separate locations using the internet, telephone or other virtual meeting technology). It is also possible within this chart to capture asynchronous meeting time scheduled into your calendar using the prefix Chat: in the subject.

The Meeting Value-Add donut shows in the outer ring, the proportion of your meetings for which you enabled feedback, and the proportion of that opportunity which was taken up by your attendees to give feedback. The inner ring shows how that feedback breaks down.

The Estimated Net Value figure that is reported is a very rough estimate of meeting value which is extrapolated from the Meeting Value-Add profile. While there is no easy way to calculate financial value from a meeting, it assumes that a neutral response to the meeting means that it just about covered its costs, and that all other responses are proportionate to that. So, for example, a meeting where the average response was ‘fully satisfied’ generated a value of twice the cost of the meeting, and so on.

All of the donut charts can be used to set filters for the other charts, and you will see if you hover over the legend for a chart. Clicking a legend item sets that as a filter, and recalculates the page for just ‘that type’ of meeting. For instance clicking the legend item ‘External’ will recalculate the charts for just your external meetings so that you can see what proportion of those: were recurring; had objectives etc.

Multiple filters can be set at the same time. The filters show alongside the date range at the top of the page, and can be removed individually by clicking the cross on the right hand end of each. In the personal view this allows the user (by clicking into the histogram) to identify specific meetings where they may wish to make changes.

The default view of the meeting stats page is for the previous 28 days. However, by clicking on the date range at the top of the chart, the user can select to view data for any of the preceding 6 months, or by clicking ‘custom’ they can select any time period of up to 28 days using the calendar which appears.

In the Team Compiler view, the user can select sub-departments and individual data to view using the ‘Team Compiler Filter’ to the right of (or below) the Time Period selector. This is organised hierarchically enabling the user to progressively select departments, sub departments, team and individuals until they can see the information they need.

It is also possible in the Team Compiler view to drill down into the data using the small pink 3 line icon in the bottom right corner of each chart. This presents a summary of how the data for that chart breaks down into the next level of the hierarchy and thereby enables the user to see how the data builds up and identify the next focus for their investigation. Clicking the name of the sub-department or individual in this view has the same effect as clicking that name in the ‘Team Compiler Filter’.

The numerical data presented on the meeting stats page is explained by clicking the little ‘i’ icon in the top right corner of each panel. Blue figures relate to meetings hosted, while green figures relate to meetings attended.

The approximate total spend is obtained by multiplying the hours consumed by hosting or in attending meetings by an approximate hourly cost of employment for those people. The approximate hourly cost (and its currency) an be adjusted by clicking the figure in the purple box:

The green figure is the cost of time incurred by all of your people in attending meetings for the time period, whether hosted by your people or not.

The blue figure is the cost of time incurred by your people as a result of them organising meetings, which includes all of the people attending whether they are your people or not.

Clearly there is some overlap within these two figures.

Effective overtime hours reflect the time spent in hosting or attending meetings or in travel outside of normal working hours. This figure is averaged across the population.

Productivity blocks show the average amount of time remaining to people outside of travel and meetings where they can concentrate on doing their work. They reflect separate contiguous blocks of 90 minutes. This figure is taken as the period which allows people to wind down for one meeting, and wind up for another, and get a good hour of thinking time in the middle.